Alex Keegan

A l e x  K e e g a n

Zanzibar

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He is waiting for the evening to wrap him up and then he will go downstairs. He has said he will only take three books, but will cheat again and take four: Black Rain, In Parenthesis, his dog-eared Kerouac and The Letters of Ted Hughes. He doesn't like Hughes all that much but it seems somehow cruel to leave that very last present.

Anna will have left her room by now, risen from her dressing table, her face perfected. After the bombshell, when she flew at him, she suddenly realised she was one black eye lined, the other undone, and so mortified was she, and quite literally in mid-blow, she was first transfixed and then transformed, and merely said, "Well, go then."

Afternoon crosses the street.

Anna will be in the kitchen now. Nutmeg, Rose Blossom, Vinegar, and rice of strange varieties—she may not have a soul but she is a fine cook. He will miss her cooking.

He has had visions. He is in Zanzibar, a tiny place on the beach. He has a gramophone and four long-playing records, two dozen books. The rent is about a pound a week. He pays a man called Afolabi who says he is the nephew of a Prince but the Prince died badly and now Afolabi is here, the owner of a hut, very cheap.

Anna is cooking. It is something a little better than cabbage-soup. The smell rises and then falls like her perfume sliding down the bathroom wall.

A fly buzzes and he idly flicks it away. When he first arrived Afolabi said, don't bother with the flies, just drink and they will go or you will not care. Afolabi makes some liquor in the jungle, crazy-strong, and it makes them dream of frogs and sighs and chaotic angels. After, they always are on the beach.

It fades then, it always does. The core is real, he knows, but always fades.

Suddenly Charles is hungry. He looks at the bed. An advert for double-glazing. The Best! This Week, for Three Days Only! (Anna said it was sensible)—his thesis on Renaissance Philosophers (for the bin) and his letter to Anna.

Please note that it may be necessary to—

They are not burning down the house.